


open up and let it flow

by soroga



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Blood, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Black Eagles Route, M/M, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Unresolved Murderous Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:42:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22707919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soroga/pseuds/soroga
Summary: After they have killed their way through everyone who would stand against them, Felix crosses the battlefield to where Jeritza stands.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Jeritza von Hrym
Comments: 12
Kudos: 39
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	open up and let it flow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [provetheworst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/provetheworst/gifts).



The mission is a slaughter, just like all other missions the Death Knight is sent on.

His scythe separates yet another head from the shoulders it belonged to. The next enemy is sliced open at the abdomen, left to collapse with their intestines in their hands. The one after loses an arm in one stroke and a leg in the next. The Death Knight rides on, impassive, untouched. None of it is enough to sate the hunger deep within him. No one here is worthy of granting him his final rest. 

At least, none of the enemies are worthy.

The Death Knight finds his eye lingering elsewhere on the battlefield. Other imperial forces fight in groups. Only one swordsman fights his way alone, tearing through enemy after enemy like a maddened beast, killing again and again without pause or rest. 

Watching the flash of Felix’s blade as he slits an enemy open from groin to neck, Jeritza thinks, _he’s beautiful._

After they have killed their way through everyone who would stand against them, Felix crosses the battlefield to where Jeritza is.

Jeritza kills from a remove. His armor is immaculate because his scythe drips with the blood of all those who would dare approach him, destroying them before they can reach. Felix kills from a short enough distance to be covered in the blood of all those who fell to his blade. His hair is matted with their blood; it is smeared in streaks across his face and neck. His gloves are so thoroughly darkened with it that they appear soaked. 

Jeritza wonders if Felix will reach out to him with one of those blood-soaked hands and finally be the one to leave a mark on him. Instead, Felix ignores him completely, instead kicking over the bodies of the last few enemies he killed. The nobles in charge, Jeritza suddenly remembers as he watches him from behind, though now they are only empty carcasses. 

Felix looks over the emblems on each ruined, bloody corpse. They are meaningless to Jeritza; he knows they indicate which noble house of Faerghus each one belongs to, but that is all. 

If they mean something else to Felix, it is hard to tell. His only reaction to each emblem is to then inspect the next. When he finishes, he crosses his arms. The blood in his gloves squelches wetly. 

“Take off that ridiculous helmet,” he says. 

Jeritza pauses. 

He dismounts his horse before reaching up to remove his helmet. It is odd to be on a battlefield without it, as if he has taken off the Death Knight’s head and left only Jeritza standing in his body. So he tucks it under his arm before walking forward to stand beside Felix. 

They stand in silence, surrounded by carnage. Jeritza keeps looking at Felix’s face, his neck, his hands. There’s so much blood everywhere. The Death Knight could cut Felix’s throat open and watch the blood burst out of him in a flood, covering the blood of the less worthy already decorating him. Perhaps that would finally sate the lust within him. And perhaps Felix would cut Jeritza open at the same time, slice open the flesh that always seems barely adequate to keep a monster from bursting out, and finally exorcise him in a rain of blood. They could fall together, their lifeblood mingling as they breathed their last. 

“Stop staring,” Felix said flatly. 

“I am sorry.” With great effort, Jeritza looks away. “You are very beautiful.” 

Felix sputters, whipping his head around to stare at him in turn. “ _What?_ ”

“The blood...” Jeritza finds words failing him. “It is an adequate decoration for you. It shows your strength. Your power. The way your sword moves, with all your might behind it. It makes me want...”

Felix eyes him warily.

“...to fight you. To know you, by knowing your sword. To one day kill you, or be killed by you.”

“Oh,” Felix says, relaxing. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” He looks around. “This isn’t the right place or the right time. We’ll be heading back to Garreg Mach tonight. We can fight tomorrow.” 

“I wish with all my heart that that was the case,” Jeritza sighs. “But I have been told that I cannot kill any who stand with the emperor. One day, when her war is over, I will cross blades with you. I think about it so often that I can picture in my mind all the different ways it could end. Perhaps I will kill you. Perhaps you will kill me. I confess I think about the second situation often. It is very pleasant to linger upon. You are one of the few worthy of finally ending my life.”

Felix blinks at him, unimpressed.

Then he stabs him. 

Felix is a true master; his sword thrusts through the shoulder joint of Jeritza’s armor, piercing all the way through the point where Jeritza’s shoulder meets his chest and coming out his back. It is a hot, vicious rush of pain, and without meaning to, Jeritza drops both his scythe and his helmet in the instant before Felix kicks him in the chest and sends him toppling backwards. 

He lands heavily, feeling the blood pooling in the back of his armor, as Felix kicks his scythe farther away. Then Felix is on top of him, one hand still on his sword where it sticks out through Jeritza’s shoulder, the other wrapping around his neck. 

Jeritza’s armor is so heavy that getting up from this position in it would be a struggle at the best of times. With Felix on top of him, it’s impossible, and not only because Jeritza is captivated by his rage-filled eyes. 

Felix stares down at him, closer than anyone else has come in years. “What makes you think,” he says, twisting the blade inside Jeritza’s body and sending fresh waves of exquisite agony through him, “that you are even worth being killed by me?” 

Jeritza lies there, panting, barely able to understand the question. Felix kills the same meaningless filth in the name of the emperor as Jeritza – is he saying Jeritza is below even them? 

He can barely move his body, but his head is unencumbered. He strains his neck up as far as it will go, so close that his lips nearly brush Felix’s. He wants so badly for them to, to be able to taste the blood splattered across his face, but Felix hesitates only a moment before shoving him back down with the hand at his neck. 

Then, Felix is sliding off of him. He plants a boot in the middle of Jeritza’s chestplate, and then Jeritza is moaning at the feeling of Felix sliding his blade out of the hole he made in Jeritza.

Jeritza is an expert in death. He knows this wound is not enough to kill him, even before Felix mutters a bitten-off healing spell, just enough to stop Jeritza’s bleeding. Jeritza will only have the blood Felix already spilled and the wound he left behind to remember this by. 

Felix will have less than that, but his face is red beneath all the dried blood on it. He, too, is panting, though he is not injured at all. 

“Become someone worthy of more than death, and then you’ll be worthy of being killed,” he says. Then he strides away, leaving Jeritza on his back in a field of corpses, warmed inside and out by something he barely understands.


End file.
